Jessica Chastain, Michael Shannon discuss new Showtime film 'George and Tammy'

"Just like those plays, the stakes of those lives were incredibly high," Jessica Chastain tells The Tennessean when asked what of her background in the Shakespearean theater prepared her for her latest role.

The superstar actress and Michael Shannon's roles as Tammy Wynette and George Jones in Dec. 4's Paramount-produced and Showtime-airing "George and Tammy" biopic miniseries are not merely crucial because they're characterizing an epic, decade-long musical and romantic partnership between country music's then-king and queen who spawned seven albums and three No. 1 singles in a decade. Moreover, it's not incredible because it's exploring a pairing that spawned folklore that has engaged online and real-time communities in spirited conversations for a half-century.

Instead, it's best to characterize the film's most tremendous success as a cinematic study of how two skilled performers use a legendary tale to highlight the emotional energy between a rock (Shannon) and a hard place (Chastain).

For example, when asked to walk The Tennessean through part of how she created her character sketch of Wynette in her mind, Chastain offers the following insight:

"Tammy lost her father when she was 9 months old and so much of her adult life revolved around being appeasing, desirable to and wanted by men -- so much that she was a stylish hairdresser and excellent cook. When thinking about that, it broke my heart to realize that such a sensual being with her voice and womanhood as her superpowers also had 36 surgeries on her womb and eventually lost her voice."

This isn't a film studying hard places. Instead, it's exploring the most challenging places.

Chastain is an Academy and Golden Globe-winning actress who has been called one of the world's most influential people. Though a Northern California-born natural redhead, she's so gifted as an actress that her most potent calling card is portraying the influence of blonde women familiar to an era where American exceptionalism married with mass media's ability to glaze idyllic American life in a countrified, saccharine filter.

In 2008, she achieved great acclaim as the title character in Dan Ireland's drama "Jolene," based on a short story by E. L. Doctorow about Dolly Parton's 1974 hit of the same name. 13 years later, her portrayal of televangelist Jim Bakker's wife, Tammy Faye, in the biopic "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

However, her portrayal of Wynette could be her best role to date.

Why?

As she described to the Irish Times in a 2017 interview, she's the daughter of a poor single mother who often sent her daughter to sleep without a meal. As well, as a classically-trained Shakespearean actress, she's well versed in inhabiting the lives of people who "were not complacent, made scary decisions and ran head-first into their lives," she notes to The Tennessean.

She notes that the previously mentioned process is the fiber that binds all great artists together. Chastain notes that Wynette indeed sang songs like "Run Woman Run" and "Stand By Your Man" that advocated returning to toxic mates because nobody could love them better than those people. However, she also married on five separate occasions after showing up in Nashville as a shock-therapy patient and mother of three children attempting to escape her first marriage. The dichotomies apparent in Wynette's life create a dramatic arc worthy of being related to 16th-century dramatic underpinnings.

Shannon is a Kentucky-born two-time Academy Award nominee whose stoic, rock-solid presence is undercut with an empathetic manner. The longer you're present with him, the deeper you are intrigued by the interplay of dark and light in his demeanor. His 30 years of acting experience includes his role as Greg Buehl, the ne'er do well boyfriend of the mother of Eminem's semi-autobiographical protagonist B-Rabbit in 2002's "8 Mile." Regarding his work in George and Tammy, Buehl's ability to be a man guided by a desire to be greater than himself while simultaneously so dour as to steal defeat from victory's jaws perpetually shines again in his current role.

Shannon notes that he was not well versed in either Jones' humanity or musical catalog before taking on the role. However, he was spurred to do so by Chastain, who offers that he was "the only person" who could tell the stories of the soul in the voice that sang songs like "He Stopped Loving Her Today." More than his ability to physically portray Jones (which he doesn't -- Jones was rumored to be 5'7", Shannon is a comparatively enormous 6'3"), Shannon found that "George and Tammy" producer Abe Sylvia's decade of research into the lives of Jones and Wynette offered him the ability to base his work around Jones' battle to love himself more than the world loved his voice.

"There are more cynical versions of the story [of Jones and Wynette] that we could tell, but there's enough cynicism in the world."

Singing with George made Tammy "blossom," says Chastain. However, given that Shannon's portrayal of Jones is unrepentantly bittersweet, the moments when Chastain's brilliant smile fills the screen are limited as compared to the moments spent in silent repose, contemplating the nature of who she is -- in 1971, while opening at Las Vegas' Landmark Hotel without her husband, Jones, she had already amassed 10 No. 1 singles over 11 solo albums -- as compared to the wildly unpredictable state of her life.

In the film, the moment Wynette is entirely alone before taking the stage coincides with her succumbing to an addiction to prescription medication prescribed to her after a poorly performed hysterectomy. Chastain describes the scene as the moment portraying the "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" singer's life "fully encompassed" her. "They said 'cut' to end the scene, and the feeling didn't stop," she adds. "I was emptying myself and refilling with [Tammy]," the actress adds. "It's a feeling unlike anything I've ever experienced. I wasn't aware of my own body or thoughts. In acting, if something like that happens once, you're lucky. Working with Michael, portraying George, it happened daily."

For Shannon acting as Jones, his silence is often tempered by the presence -- or perceived presence -- of behavior or mind-altering substances. Thus, there's a slippery hair-trigger that you watch him achieve something beyond method acting in activating. Once engaged in a different mode, he creates Jones' everyday life and times, plus the legendarily inappropriate moments for which Jones is both positively and negatively renowned, in equal measure.

Shannon achieved living up to how people imagine the Country Music Hall of Famer's presence by "capitalizing on the times he spent silently contemplating the research and story" of Jones. "Marrying himself" to Jones' experiences in how he perceives they both handled the "metaphysical quandary" of balancing self-expectations versus those placed on them by their professional industries felt appropriate to his attempt to excel in the role.

"George was up against insurmountable odds," adds Shannon. He notes that Jones being unwittingly forced to sing by his father during childhood created an "ambivalence" toward his talent that made "unfathomably complex" trauma that likely birthed his adult life as "No Show Jones," a nickname that in the actor's mind, is directly linked to Jones' deep desire to want to be loved for more than being a vocalist.

"That longing to be loved for yourself is a universal emotion that everyone can relate to."

Regarding the performance aspect of their time together, Chastain offers that the actual "magic" of the series occurs when she and Shannon sing together.

"Singing duets are what put George and Tammy on equal, solid ground with each other," says Chastain. "It's harrowing and spooky to watch the two of them, say, perform 'Golden Ring' at Wembley Stadium in London in 1981," adds Shannon. "George wasn't doing well and had a wild look in his eyes. And though they're not married then, Tammy is all over him. So they're singing about the cycles of love while very much out of the cycle of love and still communing and communicating about their love they may share."

"Regardless of the moment, the most intimate thing George and Tammy always did together was sing onstage. So even though they're in front of a crowd, when you watch them relating to each other, you get the sense that they're completely alone, too."

Bittersweetly but still smiling, Chastain sums up the allure of Showtime's "George and Tammy" relatively simply.

"These are two lonely spirits who were gifted vocalists that, when they lost each other, lost themselves. It's the kind of empathetic story that makes you want to be brave not only with your own heart, but brave with other people."

Tuning in

What: “George & Tammy”

When: 8 p.m. CT Sundays, starting Dec. 4, for a six-week limited run

Where: Showtime and the Paramount Network

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jessica Chastain discusses Tammy Wynette in new Showtime film